Hello Jamaica. Let’s imagine one day a billionaire approaches you and says, “I will give you $100 million if you spend one hour in a cage with a hippo or a leopard.” Do you accept this bored billionaire’s offer or move along very cautiously?

As odd a scenario, this highlights the most critical skill needed to traverse the tech age and life — the skill of good decision-making. Whether it’s choosing a cryptocurrency to invest in, a cybersecurity solution to protect your digital identity, or choosing the safest self-driving car to gift to your children, knowing how to assess a situation and determine the optimal choice is a lifelong superpower.

The scenario above is the first question I ask students in our decision sciences course; the idea is to present you with a dramatic life or death situation to test how you approach decision-making, given an unfamiliar topic.

As technological innovation accelerates every year, you will eventually be presented with a scenario you have little to no knowledge of and many options.

In the next 5 minutes I will present a 5-step process that will help you navigate the ever-evolving tech world, potentially saving you time and money. First off, we are not condoning fighting animals to learn life lessons in any way.

Step 1: Stop and Frame. It would be best if you took your time to fully understand what is going on, the options in front of you, and the decisions you have to make. In our example you will be awarded $100 million if you spend one hour in a cage with a hippo or a leopard, or you can walk away unharmed with no money. Of the three options, two can result in serious harm. We need to determine which one is best for us. A billionaire will choose differently than a professional hippo fighter. I suggest you Google “Hippo”.

Step 2: Choose your Decision Criteria. This step involves determining how you compare each choice. In this case, we will use expected returns; it benefits us after we adjust for the risks. The benefit is the cash reward, the risk is not leaving the cage alive. To simplify the problem we will use the probability of leaving the cage alive as the adjustment to our reward. The expected return is the probability of leaving the cage alive times the reward. If we don’t make it out, we don’t get paid. If we have a 5 per cent chance of leaving the cage, our expected return will be $5 million (5 per cent of $100 million); if we have a 100 per cent chance of leaving the cage, our expected return will be the entire $100 million (100 per cent of $100 million).

Step 3: Research and Rank. This step is all about data gathering to calculate the expected return. We used multiple sources and averaged the survival rates; there is a lot of research on animal attacks. Using the research data, we estimated the probabilities of surviving in a cage with a hippo and leopard as 42 per cent and 76 per cent, respectively. Hippos are dangerous, don’t let the cartoons fool you. According to National Geographic, they kill up to 500 people a year. For the hippo option, the expected return is $42 million; for the leopard option, it is $76 million, and the walking away option will make us no money.

Now, Step 4: The Rational Check. We made many assumptions to simplify the problem; this step tests our assumptions to ensure our final decision is reliable. For example, you could leave the cage without some arms and not be able to spend the money, or the hippo could fall asleep and not bother you. You have to weigh the importance of these uncertainties on how sure your decision is.

The final step is deciding what fits your risk appetite; if you are unsure, go with the safest option, or find a new one. So, dear reader, what would you choose? Stay innovative, Jamaica!

PS: I’m suiting up in armour.

Adrian Dunkley is the President of the Jamaica Technology and Digital Alliance and founder of StarApple AI.